Cognitive Science and Morality Workshop

I will survey evidence indicating that thinking is for doing, not for knowing. More specifically,
reasoning evolved and is well designed to serve social functions such as reputation management
and navigation within a complex world of accountability constraints. To maintain that moral
reasoning is (or should be) more important or more trusted than moral intuition, in the absence of
evidence that people can reason dispassionately about moral issues, meets Webster’s definition
of a delusion: a false conception and persistent belief unconquerable by reason in something that
has no existence in fact.

Triune Ethics Theory proposes that moral functioning is rooted in biological processes that are
shaped by early experience and evoked by situations. Each moral orientation influences
perception, goals, and perceived affordances in the moment. The Security Ethic is conditioned,
reflexive response to perceived threat. Typically studied by psychology, the Imagination Ethic is
abstracted thinking (left-brain), which can be emotionally disassociated or fueled by viciousness.
The “moral zone” has two orientations. The simpler, here-and-now orientation is Engagement or
Harmony Morality. It represents full (right brain) presence in the moment for intersubjectivity
and resonance with the Other. Communal Imagination maintains a sense of emotional
relatedness to the Other (right brain), while at the same time using abstraction capabilities (left
brain) to solve moral problems.

In Huebner et al (2009), we argued that Haidt and others had been too quick to draw the
conclusion that emotional processes played an integral role in the production of moral
judgments. However, a recent conversation with Haidt made it clear to me that his view was far
more sophisticated than this. It now seems to me that on most points the 'cognitivists' and the
'Humeans' can just agree that moral judgment is a largely reflexive and intuitive process. Yet, I
still have the sneaking suspicion that many neo-Humeans are convinced that emotions--as such--
play a crucial causal role in the production of moral judgments. I'll present a series of data--
ranging from attempted replications of well-known studies, to new manipulations on clinical
populations--to suggest that there is an important range of moral competence that dominates our
moral judgments even in the face of emotional manipulations and emotional deficits.

Moral Grammar and Intuitive Jurisprudence: Theory, Evidence, and Future Research

Scientists from various disciplines have begun to focus renewed attention on the psychology and
biology of human morality. One research program that has gained attention is universal moral
grammar (UMG). UMG seeks to describe the nature and origin of moral knowledge by using
concepts and models similar to those used in Chomsky's program in linguistics. This approach is
thought to provide a fruitful perspective from which to investigate moral competence from
computational, ontogenetic, behavioral, physiological, and phylogenetic perspectives. In my
talk, I first outline a framework for UMG and describe some of the evidence supporting it. I then
discuss some initial findings of a new related study in comparative law that seeks to determine
how certain norms, such as the prohibition of homicide, are codified and interpreted in several
hundred jurisdictions around the world. The study's main finding, the apparent universality or
near-universality of a specific and highly structured homicide prohibition, lends further support to UMG. It also raises novel questions for cognitive science, legal anthropology, experimental philosophy, and related fields.

Philosophers and developmental psychologists no longer monopolize the study of moral
psychology. The field is now the site of all manner of empirical investigation, from fMRI
studies to moral judgment tasks in the lab and in naturalistic settings. The burgeoning
interdisciplinary study of the nature of human moral judgment will no doubt contribute to our
knowledge of how we came to be moral creatures as well as to our understanding of how moral
judgment actually works as a capacity of the human mind. Still, significant caution is in order
with respect to the shape of the questions we ask in pursuing moral psychology as a branch of
cognitive science. I will draw attention to two significant challenges – the explananda challenge
and the acquisition challenge, and argue that, because these challenges are not sufficiently
recognized in a good deal of current work on moral judgment, skepticism is in order with respect
to several allegedly key findings.

Neuroscientific research has generated new perspectives regarding human cognitive processes,
and, consequently, new considerations regarding the how humans know and choose goods or the
Good. However, regardless the pace and extent of advances in neuroscience, the question
remains of how this new information intersects with traditional and current concepts of the
human Good and how we come to know it. It is this intersection of neuroscience and ethics that
is the focus of this presentation. Two arguments will be offered regarding how this intersection
should be structured. First, it will be argued that philosophical anthropologies are best suited to
explicate and bridge the gap between neuroscience and ethics. Then, secondly, the claim will be
made that a philosophical anthropology must be both broadly integrative and dynamic in order to
adequately bridge this gap.